Rift Meaning
/ɹɪft/Definition, CEFR level C2, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
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Definition
nounA chasm or fissure.
nounA lack of cohesion; a state of conflict, incompatibility, or emotional distance.
Sentence Examples
My granddaughter's behaviour has caused a rift in our family.
A deep rift opened up between them.
CEFR Practice Quiz
The earthquake created a deep ____ in the ground that separated the two fields.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The ____ between the two factions within the party deepened after the leadership election result.
Word Origin & History
From Middle English rift, of North Germanic origin; akin to Danish rift, Norwegian Bokmål rift (“breach”), Old Norse rífa (“to tear”). More at rive.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"Where ashes are heaped in drifts / Over vineyard and field and town, / Whenever he starts and lifts / His head through the blackened rifts / Of the crags that keep him down"
— 1863, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Enceladus”, in Birds of Passage:
"As far as the eye can reach is a sea of green tree tops, with occasionally a deep rift where there is a chasm. Here and there are silver threads where the rivers wind in deep gorges through the forests."
— 1897, Bram Stoker, Dracula, Westminster [London]: Archibald Constable and Company, […], →OCLC:
"Far back in the dim geologic ages, when the sediments of the old seas were being gathered and outspread in smooth sheets like leaves of a book, and when these sediments became dry land, and were baked and crumbled into the sky as mountain ranges; when the lava-floods of the Fire Period were being lavishly poured forth from innumerable rifts and craters;[…]."
— 1918, John Muir, Steep Trails:
"Elon Musk, the billionaire tech entrepreneur, has opened a new rift with Donald Trump by denouncing the US president’s tax and spending bill as a “disgusting abomination”."
— 2025 June 3, David Smith, “Elon Musk calls Trump’s ‘big, beautiful’ tax bill a ‘disgusting abomination’”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:
"I have but one rift in the darkness, that is that I have injured no one save myself by my folly, and that the extent of that folly you will never learn."
— 1931, William Faulkner, Sanctuary, Vintage, published 1993, page 130:
Explore More C2 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
The earthquake created a deep ____ in the ground that separated the two fields.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The ____ between the two factions within the party deepened after the leadership election result.